


circle this old flame

by ftmsteverogers



Series: this game with matches [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, mlm author, revenge road trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 13:14:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15774816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftmsteverogers/pseuds/ftmsteverogers
Summary: Steve, Bucky, Sam and Natasha are still on the road to take down HYDRA six months later. Steve and Bucky are still whatever-ing. Sam and Natasha still aren't asking about it.A brief coda tosleepwalk back to the battle site.





	circle this old flame

**Author's Note:**

> Road-trip intimacy is my favorite and I missed this version of these boys! I also wanted badly to explore this particular Bucky's voice.
> 
> Title is from "Matches to Paper Dolls" by Dessa.

“Well,” Natasha says. “That could have gone better.”

“Could’ve gone worse,” Bucky grunts, leaning a little more solidly into Steve’s side. Steve makes a noise that’s halfway between annoyed and exhausted, but he holds his arm a little tighter around Bucky’s waist, and that’s alright. Bucky is aware he’s bleeding, his hand is sticky-hot where it’s pressed to his side, but the adrenaline rush from earlier is louder than the pain. He’ll crash at some point. But that doesn’t matter now. Someone pointing a gun at Sam had ignited something loud and hideous in him - Sam isn't a supersoldier, he can't heal quick or easy, and he isn't as uncannily adept at backflipping out of danger as Natasha. Jumping in front of the bullet wasn’t a hard decision, not really.

Natasha unlocks their hotel room door and holds it open, lips pursed into a straight line. Steve hauls Bucky in. Sam follows last, and Bucky watches out of the corner of his eye as he double checks both sides of the hall before he closes the door and locks it.

It’s nice not being the only one who’s half convinced they’re being followed all the time. Still new, though. And strange for its newness.

“Sit your boy down, Steve, I’ll get the med kit,” Sam says, and disappears into the bathroom. Steve sets Bucky down on the bed, hands not leaving his body for more than a second. Bucky holds his breath while Steve slides behind him, helps him pull his shirt off over his head in one smooth motion, sits up against the headboard and arranges Bucky against his chest.

Bucky eyes the bloody shirt where it’s puddled on the ground. Natasha follows his gaze and sighs, bending to pick it up. “You go through shirts very quickly,” she comments, balling it up to toss it into the closet hamper. “How much blood has he lost, Steve?”

“Pint, maybe,” Steve says. He leans forward and puts his chin on Bucky’s shoulder so he can look at the wound. It’s shallow – Bucky is luckier than he ought to have been – but it doesn’t look so great. Bucky covers it with a bloody hand. Steve lets him.

“Don’t know what you think you’d be doing right now if you didn’t have anyone with medical training on your mission,” Sam says, unzipping the kit on the mattress. “Probably trying to do home surgery on each other and dying.”

Steve huffs a laugh. “We appreciate you keeping us from drastic measures, Sam.”

“Seconded,” Natasha adds smoothly from where she perches on the windowsill. Sam smiles a little as he pulls out alcohol and butterfly bandages.

Bucky has to turn his head away with a grimace, reaching back blindly behind himself to grip onto Steve’s leg. Steve’s thigh tenses under his hand, but Bucky’s tense too, and Steve doesn’t say or do anything to get Bucky to stop touching him. He doesn’t move either, he just sits still and lets Bucky squeeze the hell out of his leg while he waits for Sam to patch him up.

“Sorry, Buck,” Sam says, not unkindly, and puts a hand on Bucky’s stomach. Bucky doesn’t twitch away from him, but he does bite the inside of his cheek so that he won’t make any noise when Sam pours alcohol over the wound, a towel at his ribs to catch the runoff. It burns. He expected it, though. He’s taken worse.

“You’re doin’ good,” Steve says, combing fingers through the sweaty hair that sticks to the back of Bucky’s neck. “Real good, pal.”

“Don’t remember tellin’ you to call me ‘Buck’,” Bucky rasps, blinking up at Sam.

Sam looks down at him, expression measured and considering. “You want me to stop?”

Bucky thinks about it for a second, then shakes his head. Sam nods. Then he pours a little more alcohol on Bucky’s wound and the rush of pain makes Bucky’s head stop doing complicated things for a while.

Steve keeps petting his hair. Bucky can focus on that instead, and he does, wondering how Steve’s hands can stay so damn steady. Bucky’s the sniper, he’s meant to be the one who remains ice cold and sharp in the field, but it’s Steve with the steady hands and Bucky with his eyes squeezed closed, mouth hanging open. It’s nice to be held, though. Bucky doesn’t know when he forgot that, but the knowledge feels new and startling. He likes being held. He isn’t sure he’d like it if it was anyone but Steve doing the holding, but he guesses it doesn’t matter all that much, since Steve seems to be the only one offering.

He likes it. He hopes he doesn’t have to get shot again to have it more often.

“You’ll heal up fast enough that it doesn’t make sense to give you stitches,” Sam explains, patting Bucky’s side dry with a clean hand towel, gauze and bandages firmly in place. “Feel okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Thanks, Sam.”

Sam touches his knee, squeezing briefly before he stands. There’s something complicated on his face, something halfway between _thank you_ and _you idiot_ , and Bucky’s not sure which side he’ll land on. He wonders if it’s the same look he’s always giving Steve. “Gotta wash the blood off my hands. You wanna strategize after, Steve?”

Bucky tips his head back to catch Steve already looking at him with his brow creased.

“Anybody on our tail yet, Nat?” Steve asks.

Natasha blows a bubblegum bubble that pops with a snap. “Not as far as I can tell.”

Steve nods; Natasha’s judgement is to be trusted. “Then I think we can wait twelve hours to make a move. Buck needs to rest,” he says. “Keep an eye out, though.”

“I always do,” Natasha says. “I assume you’d rather share a room with him, then.”

Bucky looks away. They’ve been dividing up the night watches evenly so far, getting one or two hotel rooms at a time depending on the layout of the building, and they’ve slept in every combination possible between the four of them at one point or another. He and Steve end up together more often than not, though. Sam graciously allows them to attribute it to old habits, but Natasha’s smile is always very knowing.

They’ll have to tell them eventually that they’re – whatever – but Steve seems to be in no hurry and Bucky’s no different.

“Yes,” Steve answers easily. “If you and Sam aren’t sick of each other.”

Sam nudges Natasha’s shoulder with his own. She nudges him back with her elbow. “I think we’ll manage,” he says.

With that decided, Bucky closes his eyes. Steve hasn’t let go of him yet, even though Sam has been through with bandaging him for a while now, and he’s stroking meaningless patterns onto Bucky’s right shoulder with his fingertips. Bucky doesn’t lean away. He just breathes and lets Steve touch him and listens to the sound of Natasha and Sam gathering their things to go to the next room over. Water runs as Sam washes his hands. Bucky thinks about that, about his own blood running down the drain, and is grateful. Better his than Sam’s. Or Natasha’s.

Or Steve’s.

“Rest easy, Bucket,” Sam tells him, ruffling his hair as he passes him, and then there’s the sound of the door opening and closing again. Bucky cracks an eye just as the door clicks shut, yellow light from the hallway creeping in between the doorframe and carpet.

“I used to be scary, you know,” Bucky says, after a brief moment of silence. “I was the deadliest assassin in the world.”

Steve blinks down at him. “I know,” he says slowly, obviously not knowing where Bucky’s going with this. “I was there for part of that.”

“Bucket,” Bucky repeats, dumbfounded.

Steve laughs as he leans back against the headboard again. “I don’t think you can be all that scary after a guy’s seen you in your underwear, pal.”

“Is that why you ain’t scared of me?” Bucky asks, eyes narrowed. Steve just shrugs. Bucky glares at him for a long moment before he gives up and slumps further into Steve’s embrace. “Now I gotta get my reputation back.”

Steve tugs on the end of one lock of dark hair. “How about you direct that energy toward quitting your smoking habit instead.”

“Baby steps, Steve,” Bucky says. “And fuck off.”

“Just saying.” Steve leans in and sniffs Bucky’s head dramatically. “Eau de ashtray.”

Bucky, being injured, does not elbow Steve in the stomach to instigate a tussle that would make Natasha and Sam bang on the wall separating their rooms. But it’s a close call.

“Shut up.” He leans his head back, scowling. “And be nice to me, I’m wounded.”

Steve smiles again, the stupid lopsided one that Bucky loves most. “I’m always nice to you,” he says, and bends down to kiss him.

The kiss is upside down and sort of bad, but it’s Steve’s lips that are soft as they move against his own, and Bucky is gut-punched by it every time. Steve has kissed him every day for six months, now, but it still feels brand new, aching like a fresh bruise. Steve’s tongue strokes into his mouth. Bucky makes a small frustrated sound, arching his back to get closer, and Steve puts a hand to his chest to still him.

“No strenuous activity,” he tells him gently, and rubs his thumb over his sternum. “You want to hurt yourself worse and make Sam give you stitches?”

“Really?” Bucky shoots back, unimpressed. “You’re gonna kiss me dirty and tell me to calm down?”

“Didn’t say you had to calm down.” Steve slides out from under him, settling Bucky down gently on the pillows he had been resting his back against. He nudges Bucky’s legs apart slightly and fits himself between them. “Just that you had to lie still. You gonna cooperate?”

Bucky looks up at him, cocking a brow. “You’re the Captain. I follow your orders.”

“When you feel like it, maybe,” Steve says, rolling his eyes. He thumbs Bucky’s tac pants open and pulls down the zipper.

Bucky grins. “When I feel like it,” he agrees, and lifts his hips a little to help Steve pull them off.

“Well?” Steve skims both hands up Bucky’s thighs, his ribs, leaning over him carefully so as not to put any weight on Bucky’s injured side. “You feel like it, Sergeant?”

Bucky stays still when Steve kisses his neck, which is answer enough. But he knows Steve likes to hear him say it out loud, so he murmurs, “Yeah, Cap,” as he turns his head to give Steve more room. Baring his throat like the animal he sometimes feels he still is.

Steve, a similar kind of animal, maybe, bites down very gently just beneath Bucky’s jaw.

Bucky tries hard not to squirm. He focuses on his body and how it feels, stroking a hand up and down Steve’s bicep. Steve pulls down Bucky’s underwear when he’s through scraping teeth over the juncture where Bucky’s throat meets his neck, and there’s something even dirtier about being naked when Steve is fully clothed than it is when they’re both stripped down bare.

“There you are,” Steve murmurs, leaning down to kiss the middle of Bucky’s chest. “There’s my guy.”

Bucky threads fingers through Steve’s hair to hang on as Steve makes his way down his body. It takes almost nothing to get him going these days, hard from just the brief suggestion of teeth against his stomach. He doesn’t make a sound when Steve takes him into his mouth aside from breathing a little harder, and true to promise, he doesn’t try to move under Steve’s attentions, doesn’t strain the aching muscles that would worsen his condition and make him start bleeding again in the middle of a blowjob.

He’s pretty sure Steve would draw the line there. Pretty sure.

“Fuck,” he breathes, tightening his hold on his fistful of blonde hair. Steve hums his agreement around Bucky’s dick, rubbing a reassuring hand up one muscled thigh. Steve’s mouth is wet and blood-hot and feels so good that Bucky could die from it, would die from it, feels like he’s dying from it already with every bob of Steve’s head.

He pets Steve’s hair back from his face. Steve’s eyes are dark and liquid-blue, long eyelashes framing them perfectly. He looks up at Bucky with an intensity that Bucky only ever sees on the battlefield and in the bedroom, laser-focused on his task; and maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that Steve fucks the way he fights, throwing himself into it with a dedication that borders on obscene, but it catches Bucky off-guard nearly every time.

Steve takes a second to lick at the slit, and Bucky moans.

“Gotta stay quiet,” Steve reminds him, lower lip catching on the head, and drags his tongue all the way down the length of Bucky’s cock. “Thin walls. You want the others to hear?”

“You’re a menace,” Bucky tells him warningly, but manages not to groan when Steve swallows him down again.

He becomes aware at some point that Steve is jerking off while he sucks him, right hand no longer resting on Bucky’s hip but moving between his own legs, and this fact hits Bucky so hard his toes curl.

“Couldn’t wait, huh,” he murmurs, cupping a hand over Steve’s cheek. The hot flush creeping down Steve’s throat gives him his answer, as does the way Steve doubles down, taking him so deep Bucky can feel his cock nudge against the back of his throat. He wants to tell him to slow down, that it’s fine, they have all night – but they’re both bloodstained and battered and Bucky can understand Steve’s desperation very well. He doesn’t stop him.

He does pull Steve’s hair with a little more urgency when he starts to get close, but Steve maintains stubborn eye contact and stays where he is, so Bucky comes a second later with Steve’s lips wrapped tight around him.

Steve falls onto the bed next to him after he’s wiped his mouth with the back of a hand, breathing raggedly, and shoves his face into the crook of Bucky’s neck while he jerks off. Bucky grasps at Steve’s free hand and holds it tightly, whispers filthy things in Steve’s ear, squeezes his hand with all the reassurance he can muster when Steve comes.

 

* * *

 

 

Bucky’s healed enough to change his own bandages in the bathroom when the pain wakes him up at 3 am. It’s a testament to how much Steve trusts him these days that he doesn’t stir when Bucky slips out of bed, just mumbles something unintelligible and settles again when Bucky kisses his head. Used to be that Bucky couldn’t leave for ten minutes without Steve going a little nuts with worry or conviction that Bucky’s gone for good this time.

Steve rolls over, mashing his face into the pillow. Bucky guesses they’re both getting better.

In the bathroom, Bucky peels off the bandages and washes the blood from his side with a wet hand towel. He thinks, absently, that he will probably have to steal it so the cleaners at the hotel don’t find the blood. That’s alright. He’s stolen a lot of things in his lifetime, and not many of them were as benign as a single washcloth stamped with a hotel insignia in one corner.

The healing skin is shiny and pink. It’ll be scar tissue inside of a week. Bucky is grateful for this, even if the way the blessing was given to him makes his heart turn itself inside out in his chest with disgust every time he thinks about it too hard. It _is_ a blessing, though. He’ll take what he can get, even if, like every other blessing, it comes with God’s attention. This makes it dangerous.

But then, he reasons, so is he.

He takes fresh gauze from the first aid tin and tapes it to his ribs. He has Steve waiting for him in the bedroom, and Sam and Natasha next door. This is more than he thought he would ever get. Ghosts aren’t usually allowed to come home.

He slips back into bed, sliding between the sheets, and worms his way under one of Steve’s arms. He’s immediately pulled closer, Steve nuzzling into his neck with a little satisfied _mm._

In the morning, they will gather up their friends and they will find a new HYDRA base to raze, and it will be good, it will be better than good. Bucky is only really good at the one thing, his skill set is very particular, and it feels so good to be doing it for the right reasons this time. This is some kind of penance. He is trying so hard to deserve the man in his arms.

Steve stirs a little when Bucky presses a kiss to the crown of his soft, blond head. “There you are,” Bucky murmurs. “That’s my guy.”

“Damn right,” Steve mumbles sleepily in reply.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm transbucky on tumblr! Come say hi :)


End file.
